


seamen come home late

by avantedef



Category: GOT7, JJ Project
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, GOT7_TAROT_19, Heavy Angst, M/M, Romance, Soulmates, War, mentioned mark and jackson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-11 13:01:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19928482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avantedef/pseuds/avantedef
Summary: "and every time asking: 'what will you do this time?'maybe it was a silly question, a singsong that went:will you stay or will you go? what will you do?will you stay? (what do you think of in your absences?)or will you go? (our love is made of silences)will you stay? (darling, why would you wait?)or will you go? (seamen come home late)""i marinai tornano tardi" by murubutu





	seamen come home late

**Author's Note:**

> big shout-out to [aj](https://twitter.com/jiasangel/) for being an amazing, supportive beta reader and helping me out even at short notice,, thank you ♡

there is a poem that, somewhere, goes: _“waking alone / at the hour when we are / trembling with tenderness”_ and that was the exact moment jinyoung was jolted upright by a violent thunder. he had fallen asleep while reading the book still in his hands, his boyfriend’s warmth vivid next to him. he wasn’t sure whether he had been dreaming words or images, but his parched throat felt as if it had survived horrific screams and that was enough to halt his questioning.

an emptied glass of water later, he remembered it was summer and not the nicest kind. a terrible storm was insistently knocking at their windows, asking to be heard – so he did. thinking had always come easier to him at night-time, but, with piles and piles of paperwork to review and submit at the medical research department, he wasn’t so glad he was sacrificing sleep to dwell on possibilities.

he sighed, concluding he was going to have to double his caffeine intake the following morning. he didn’t mind the smell of coffee, but drinking it made his insides churn unpleasantly. at the mere thought of it, he got vaguely nauseous and got back into bed to ground himself. he turned his head to look at jaebeom sleeping on the too-small bed they shared and felt a pang of guilt grip his stomach like a vice.

jinyoung was the type of person who prided himself for his hard work. he was fierily defensive about his title and, by extent, about his intelligence. considering not many succeeded in becoming full-fledged doctors _and_ researchers during wartime, both due to the lack of funding directed towards education and the new enlistment rules, he knew he had lots to flaunt. which, he also knew, didn’t make him much of a palatable person for everyone, but surely an interesting character and possibly one of the brightest minds Seoul was aware of. that’s what his colleagues at the hospital said, at least. his patients were mainly mine workers and common civilians, but there hadn’t been even a single surgery gone awry under park jinyoung’s attentive scrutiny.

that was meagre consolation knowing what he had been up to the last few weeks. the letter had read like a literal cry for help by some general who led troops at the forefront, mentioning the scarcity of supplies and the ever-increasing number of dying men in a way that had almost physically broken jinyoung’s heart. but then there was the honest, albeit humanly selfish, question that had overrun his mind: why him? out of all the trained, expert soldiers who were waiting for their chance at fighting for the nation’s freedom, why him, who couldn’t even _hold_ a gun?

after that, the realisation: they needed someone to stitch men back together and send them out on the battlefield again. duty was something a doctor, and especially one of jinyoung’s calibre, could never shy away from – not when it meant reassuring an old woman she wasn’t going to die because of a skin rash nor when it meant risking your life to save someone else’s. the thing was, and the young man was starting to get the gist of it, theory and practice are two substantially different matters. like when kids are ten and at the peak of their honesty so they pinkie-promise to be forever together: the intention is genuine; _too_ genuine for the naivety it stemmed from.

he had spent that afternoon (and a few after that) reading and rereading those desperate words, letting the tragedy get a hold of his body, soak his bones, in hopes it was going to shake him out of his transfixed state. when he understood those papers were only going to haunt his worst nightmares, he locked them in his bedtime drawer and pretended they didn’t exist. had it been an official convocation sent to his department specifically, he wouldn’t have been able to avoid facing it without there being repercussions – the medical staff’s motto was _“our plan of action is reaction”_ , meaning he would have had to decide immediately or accept being disbarred and losing face.

that’s why, burying his shame deeply inside himself, he took time to decide, unconsciously hoping the letter would erase itself from existence. yet, the more he forced himself not to think about it, the heavier his heart grew: every day, hour, minute he spent safely travelling back and forth between the hospital and his house, or eating cheesecake at his favourite café downtown, or making love to the light of his life – every second far from the eye of war, he knew, didn’t rightfully belong to him anymore. he was living on stolen time, letting people die out of sheer cowardice.

at the peak of his exasperation, paranoia had manifested itself like an invisible sick, posing questions on his behalf and tying a noose around his neck: had he been the only one out of all his colleagues to be called to arms? and if so, wasn’t it too much of a coincidence that the single most renowned doctor in the capital was to join a war he didn’t have the slightest chance of surviving? he had never received military training unlike most of the specialists in emergency interventions, who had left right at the dawn of the battle. thinking back to their faces full of conviction, their upright stance wordlessly announcing they were as ready as they would have ever been, jinyoung shut his eyes, tightly; he buried his nails deep into his palms arms cheeks, pretending the sting came from barbed wire.

that couldn’t last, though, not when he had to show himself he was still capable, still in control: he had a hospital to run, patients to tend to, and a single responsibility to ignore – for the sake of his sanity, just as long as the hidden cameras finally showed themselves and unravelled the prank. he made sure, after every shift, to take note of the people who could have wanted him out on the frontline and were thus more likely to rat him out. suspecting colleagues was out of line, he knew that, but it was out of the question that none was involved and the general had only singled him out because of some word of mouth. besides, did he know anyone wearing the uniform? he couldn’t recall any name – even the medical recruits had been mere acquaintances in the sea of people he had to deal with daily.

anyway, the news were constantly flashing pictures from the battlefield, at any hour of the day, keeping an updated list of the departed with a counter: it didn’t matter if the in-studio anchor-man had moved on to the sports or cuisine sections; the number was always there. most citizens believed it was a not-so-subtle way to remind people how many were to be kept in their prayers, which was what the churches preached during sunday gatherings. jinyoung, though, had never been one to buy that kind of lies, which probably had to be traced back to his field of study: there was no way doctors and gods were compatible, there were too many ideological divergences. for example, “ _why do believers thank god when_ doctors _save lives?”_ was a question that had been bugging him ever since his university days.

his personal views sided him against the general public’s opinion, which was why he had been advised not to get too political in interviews and he didn’t mind. he prioritised living peacefully above everything else and drew immense satisfaction from being unattackable, be it because people actually admired him or because they didn’t know where he stood regarding certain topics. and that was how he had gone through a good chunk of his existence, blissfully unperturbed, with a soothing love plucking at his heartstrings in private. like all dreams, though, there comes a moment your wings vanish, and you are faced with freefall.

each thought linked to the letter made desperation resurface: there were countless of young soldiers outside the walls, all trembling pupils and imploding dreams, being immolated on the altar of the god of nothing; broken lip after missing teeth after bloody nose after lashes heavy of ash—he couldn’t bear it, and he despised himself for it. he could have been out there _helping_ instead of lying lazily on his couch, his boyfriend on top of him tracing patterns over his erratic heart. was being scared of death even an excuse in such a critical situation? was he better than any other person to afford the privilege of not sacrificing for the nation? for the first time in thirty years, he didn’t know where to look for goodness within himself: he was out of redeeming traits.

“jinyoung?” murmured jaebeom out of the blue, looking like a cat who’s been stirred awake. the younger answered by humming noncommittally, the burdensome velvet drapes of his mind still teasing bits of the nightmare he was trapped in, unable to end the staging. and to think the only script were a few ink blots left to fade away in his bedtime drawer.

“you’ve been absent these days. like you’ve been going somewhere i can’t reach.”

jinyoung was thrust back into reality by jaebeom’s honeyed voice. there was a hint of worry in it and, as much as he didn’t like it, he couldn’t find it in himself to reassure his boyfriend and skirt around the topic. jaebeom would have picked up on his reticence anyway.

“i’m sorry… I’ve been really busy,” was the best explanation jinyoung could pry out of his jangled mind.

“i noticed. you’ve been picking up even more shifts at the hospital than you used to… discovered something new?”

“no, no… we have put most researches on hold for lack of funds. besides, nobody needs tirades about cells and their regeneration process. they want to live. or survive, at least… we owe them to commit ourselves fully to that.”

he was unravelling, shifting the river’s course rock by rock until even the shore turned unreliable: quicksand. he realised that was the best way to describe how he had been feeling the past weeks – drowning in concrete, his throat scratched to blood by someone else’s cries for help, his lungs heavy like lead. wasn’t that much like a war, too?

“you’re a great doctor, jinyoung, you’re doing everything you can.”

 _no, i am not_ , the younger thought, _and i hate that i’m not doing enough, but—_

“am i a good person, too?” he asked so quietly he wasn’t sure he’d said it at all, but jaebeom was listening and he’d have heard it anyhow.

“i think so, yeah. why wouldn’t you be?” jaebeom replied and his tone was so _soft_ jinyoung had to physically bite his tongue not to spill everything.

“i don’t know,” – he started cautiously, gulping audibly before continuing – “but i’ve been thinking about this conflict, about death, and… if i happened to be called at the forefront, i’m not sure what i’d do.”

“but that’s normal, baby. can’t be easy to make up your mind about something like that.”

“for some it is easy, though. they are called and they just… go.”

“the best of us are a little braver than the rest,” said jaebeom with a lopsided smile.

“so i’m not one of the best?” teased jinyoung, desperate to change the tone of the conversation before he ripped his own hair off.

when the other didn’t immediately reply, the younger lifted his head only to find him staring, intently, as if he were evaluating the best choice of words for that specific human in front of him. jaebeom wasn’t usually particularly mindful around other people: that sort of tenderness was a special treatment included in “the boyfriend package”, as he put it. jinyoung thought he was simply whipped about him and, with time, his edges had softened all around. on a side note, that package seemed to also comprehend a diverse selection of (tragically) rarely used lingerie that jinyoung had made him wear when they still used to attend events with their friends. it was that sort of shenanigans that never failed to get a chuckle out of him even at work, at the time.

he wished they could be as guilt-free as they used to be before the war broke out, only thinking about all those pointless earthly things jinyoung was so familiar with. the churches said that anything within their mortal reach was to be discarded in favour of devoting themselves to the restless souls of those who had fallen in battle, which made him want to scream because that’s what his profession was all about! couldn’t he just enjoy whatever was left of his time on earth when he wasn’t working? not a saviour, nor a saint: for once, just a man. nobody even remembered anymore why the conflict had started, but the aftermath of tragedy was spoiling the very concept of aliveness to the point the dead mattered more than the living. but jinyoung didn’t want to die, he didn’t didn’t didn’t _didn’t_ —

“hey, come back” – suddenly whispered jaebeom – “i love you, you know?”

there was a gravity in the way he usually said it that the younger had learned to associate with his desire to convey meaningfulness. satisfied with jinyoung’s flushed cheeks and ears in response, he went back to lie on his chest. as always, his ear posed right over his beating heart, listening. they were interrupted by jaebeom’s phone ringing, which meant either that some of his colleagues at the iron factory needed his help, or that their dinner had arrived. since food and water were rationed to make sure the army wouldn’t have run out, each apartment complex was assigned a doorkeeper in charge of getting the correct portions to the residents. basically, just another way for the government to ensure order was maintained at all times.

“yeah, fourth floor. thanks,” said jaebeom into the phone and stood to get the door.

their concierge – if that’s what one could call a brute in a bulletproof uniform holding a weapon and a 7/11 plastic bag – was a man of few words, which jinyoung found was both a relief and utterly eerie. what was even more unsettling, in his opinion, was the way that man looked at their apartment whenever they had to open the door for him. it was nothing special, to be quite fair, but they had made sure the few pieces of furniture laying around the spacious living room were elegant in their simplicity.

they were all white: from the small love seat at the very centre of the room, to the cubed bookshelves above the TV and the table the latter sat atop of, the kitchen chairs. even the walls had been left unpainted, majorly not to risk losing their deposit money rather than respecting the colour scheme – still, that gave the room a bright and airy look that usually impressed their guests.

it also reminded jaebeom of a house by the ocean: immersed in light, limitless. his dream, he often mentioned, was to spend an eternal sunday in a room with glass walls that opened directly on a sand path to the sea. they were lucky to even have an apartment, in jinyoung’s opinion, but jaebeom usually argued that they were lucky to have a home at all, which was why he considered himself satisfied with their lifestyle.

as he was still mulling over the unspoken, he didn’t notice the exchange was over and his boyfriend was setting the table in almost total darkness; the kitchen lamp had burned out months before and getting a substitute was near impossible. for some reason, they decided controlling the energy consumption wouldn’t have been enough without making light bulbs a rarity.

he watched two glasses being set parallel each other. the soft light of a candle sitting between them flickered like distant memories, gone too soon to be tangible. gone too soon. jinyoung gulped and tried his best to bring the conversation they’d had earlier out of his mind, to be _there_ for jaebeom like he wanted. but _it_ was there, instead, liquefying his insides like acid and threatening to pull him under.

“would you miss me?” – jinyoung found himself saying out of the blue – “if i had to go far away, like, for work… would you miss me?”

“why, do you have to?” asked jaebeom calmly and slightly puzzled.

“that’s not the point right now.”

“i don’t know what’s up with you tonight and you seem hellbent on not wanting to tell me,” said jaebeom. he bit his lower lip before speaking again.

“but of course i’d miss you, idiot. do you even need to ask?” 

“… thank you,” answered jinyoung as he rubbed his right eye with the back of his hand. he had never wanted to cry more in his life and that only made his heart throb more with guilt. 

“such a baby, park jinyoung” – softly uttered jaebeom with that vague lisp he got whenever he smiled too hard and spoke at the same time – “come here.”

everything weighed less when jaebeom held him. the focus shifted from the clamour of the outer void to the quiet thundering of their heartbeats pressed together and it was easier. yet the candle burnt, reminding jinyoung time does not stop despite all the begging.

just like that, a month went by quite uneventfully, which jinyoung was beyond glad for. he was still having trouble sleeping at night, but with his cowardly stunt going apparently unnoticed, the fear of any comeuppance was gradually exchanged for daily worries: ordering more gloves for the nurses, making sure mrs. jeon in room twelve had a dessert to go with her lunch, supervising the cleaning process of the operating rooms. as well as, since it was finally january, remembering to do something special for jaebeom’s birthday. he didn’t like celebrating it, but nothing was going to stop their friends from coming over and embarrassing him for an entire night by singing happy birthday. especially jackson, the number one supporter of all things festive.

of course, what made it all the more “special”, in their friends’ minds, was that it was illegal. alcohol was one of the first things to be banned when the New Council rose to power and the curfew made it impossible to throw actual parties. besides, it’s not like everyone had something to celebrate – another reminder that they were the lucky ones, untouched by tragedy. jinyoung wasn’t sure whether it was morally right to act that way, but being in each other’s presence put them at ease. as long as he had that family and his job, jinyoung thought, he didn’t care about much else. so, on the night of jaebeom’s birthday, they passed the time laughing as quietly as they could, and it was enough.

the next morning, right when the changing of the guard was happening, everybody sneaked out the fire emergency exit and headed to work as inconspicuous as possible. thankfully, government cameras had been installed only in workplaces and areas of public aggregation, like the main square, but residential neighbourhoods weren’t kept a watch on as closely. probably to avoid panic escalating into riots, but it proved to be unnecessary anyway: citizens didn’t violate, nor question, the law. which also meant, much to jinyoung’s dismay, that nobody was against their privacy being invaded as a “safety measure”. he didn’t know, exactly, how the letter addressed to him had made it past the controls since it was personal correspondence rather than a recruitment missive, but something about how plain and official the envelope looked made him think it hadn’t arisen suspicions.

despite his ever-building anxiety, since work kept piling up, jinyoung couldn’t find time to investigate further. he was spending more and more nights at the hospital, double- and triple-checking all the patients and making sure nothing went awry. after a week of endless wandering around the entire medical facility, there was nothing else he could focus on besides his aching back and sore feet. some of his colleagues looked worried about his health (the irony!) and suggested he went back home for the weekend. jinyoung didn’t want to leave, but after a few more hours without any proper rest, he ended up letting his migraine make the decision for him.

coming back home that day didn’t feel wonderful the way he had been expecting. it was like a thick fog was hanging in the main living space and the hallway to the bedroom, giving his usually airy house a spectral aura. jinyoung, hadn’t he been exhausted out of his mind, would have normally read the charged air and geared himself for a petty fight with his boyfriend over something silly like socks gone missing (he was bad at organising stuff despite living with a clean freak) or who actually ate the last of their once-in-a-while sweet treats (it was always jaebeom, even when he supposedly was on a diet).

though, for some reason jinyoung had no energy to pinpoint, it was different still. he took off his shoes and dropped the keys in the small glass container they used as a table centrepiece. it had been a move-in gift from jaebeom’s parents and he had been so glad it matched the minimalist theme of their apartment, or he would have had to sweet-talk his boyfriend into hiding it from view. jinyoung appreciated gifts, but he preferred when people let him choose what he wanted and simply paid for it. his boyfriend’s ones being the exception, somehow: he always knew what jinyoung wanted, even when he himself didn’t.

as soon as his coat was on the hanger bar behind the front door, jinyoung looked for his reading glasses. there was no sign of his boyfriend and the darkness made it hard for him to make out the shapes of the furniture around him. as he thought that, just on cue, he slammed into the hallway door jamb and hissed in pain.

“hyung” – he called as he massaged his throbbing hip – “i’m home early. more less in one piece, too…”

no answer. he noticed the light coming from their bedroom and trudged until there, heart in his throat.

“hyung?” he called again, opening the door. he couldn’t make out jaebeom’s face from where he was standing, but he appeared to be holding something in his hands, a piece of paper—

“jinyoung,” – the seriousness of his tone surprised the younger, now more awake but still connecting the dots with some difficulty – “what is this?”

when jaebeom turned around to face him, jinyoung’s eyes took in every small piece one at a time. the letter, out of place in his boyfriend’s hands, like a make-believe detail added to a realer image in a dream. the cold moonlight flooding in from the window bathed everything in an evanescent gleam, turned jaebeom’s skin grey: sand at night, gunpowder, cinders.

“hyung, listen— that— i was set up—”

  
“what?”

“i mean,” – he licked his dry lips, thought of how not to sound as desperate as he felt – “isn’t it weird that it was the best doctor in Seoul, who couldn’t fire a bullet to save his life, to be called to arms? i’m sure someone wanted to, like, get rid of me—”

“ _what?_ are you being serious right now?”

jaebeom’s stern tone cleared jinyoung’s mind: what was left of the tiredness that had been weighing him down left room to adrenaline and, though he didn’t want to admit it to himself, shame.

“… yes,” he murmured. his eyes were fixed on the wall behind jaebeom’s head. 

“jinyoung, what the fuck? of course they’d call the most talented doctor, people are _dying_ out there and they’re trying not to! if not you, _who else?_ ”

jaebeom was visibly trying with all his might not to raise his voice, but that just made jinyoung want even more to bury his head under some sand and asphyxiate. considering his irregular heartbeats and his shallow intakes of breath, he was probably already halfway there. he gathered the fiery that was left in him and tried to hold his boyfriend’s gaze.

“what do you want me to say? i’m sorry! i’m sorry i’m a coward, i’m sorry i panicked!” he was barely keeping his voice level at that point.

“you’re a doctor, jinyoung! you should be _honoured._ ”

“well, i’m not! i’m _scared,_ hyung, i’m terrified.”

tears threatened to fall to the ground, blood drops on a crime scene – on a battlefield. images of cruelty and violence flashed before his eyes, a third presence in the room, the final knot around his throat. he fell to his knees, the heels of his palms pressing tight against his eyes. there was silence stretching out too long, then an almost imperceptible sigh.

“aren’t you scared?” suddenly asked jinyoung as to not focus on jaebeom’s disappointment in him.

“everybody is. living in the city sheltered from evil… it’s a privilege, we take it for granted too often.”

a small pause, the bed springs creaking under pressure ( _just like humans_ , jinyoung thought).

“but we mustn’t forget about the war. about the violence. we can’t put it in a drawer and ignore it,” – he continued, pointedly – “there are people suffering and they deserve our help. it’s all we can do to redeem them.”

jinyoung wasn’t crying, he didn’t have the energy to, but he kept his head hanging low. the inevitable had finally taken place: he had run out of time. but jaebeom’s voice had crashed against the stillness they’d fallen in once more, begging jinyoung to fall back into motion – and he did, he drank from it like a nomad in the desert. he got to his feet, dragged himself to the bed and sat next to his boyfriend, eager to bask in his warmth.

“i’m angry because i’m scared, too, jinyoung-ah,” hearing the nickname brought the younger on the verge of tears again, but he stayed quiet, listening. their hands found each other.

“would you come looking for me if i were out there, too?”

the question came in a whisper, as if it were a secret.

jinyoung’s breath caught in his throat and he whipped his head back up to look at jaebeom’s face. he started looking for the right words to reassure him, to tell him there was no way he would have left him out there to die alone, but, and he had never wanted to cry that much in his life, he realised he wasn’t sure that was true anymore. he had told jaebeom multiple times he would have given his life for him, but the sole idea of death since reading the letter had been so sickening, he paled at its mere mention. as he stared at his boyfriend’s nose – anywhere but his eyes – he hoped his voice would find a way out, still.

nevertheless, before jinyoung could even utter a word, jaebeom pressed a kiss against his ear and, in a voice so small it could have melted the sun, he moved his lips against his skin.

“i’ve been called. i have to leave tomorrow.”

jinyoung probably stopped breathing altogether because jaebeom hurried to add something else.

“we can get through this together, like always,” jaebeom said and jinyoung admired the strength he was putting into steeling them both in the face of an ending. that air of finality lacing his voice made the younger want to curl in on himself and let the floor swallow him. he wouldn’t be stealing time if he wasn’t using it, would he? the earth could absorb him and he’d be useful once again, trying his hand at something completely different than being human since that had turned out not to be his thing.

as he remained silent, jaebeom turned the handle and got out of the room, the hallway, the house. jinyoung suffocated a whine in his throat and gave in to tears. he wished he had been born more foolish; a good dose of recklessness would have come in handy at times. there were some verses pulsating in his temples, something along the lines of: _“this is the way the world ends / not with a bang but a whimper”_ and the only thing he wanted was for them to get out his brain; those, the sound of his boyfriend’s warm voice reading them, awestruck. what had been the last word he had said? jinyoung didn’t understand why it mattered to him, so suddenly, but he felt like it did—it must have been an important one. he wasn’t listening, or maybe he was but he didn’t want to.

are there goodbyes more painful than lovers’ ones? there’s such unmatchable tenderness about them, like the renewal of a promise for a tomorrow that will never come – at least not for them. unfortunately, as much as he would have given to stop that, the sun would rise again. and he would be sitting there, hands on his ears to block out the ticking of the clocks, watching the star make fun of him for loving the moon; poets must soar in the dark because they don’t need light to see. as the colours of the city slowly faded into clarity, he wished making the right decision was as easy as loving jaebeom.

right before his body surrendered to exhaustion, he remembered the last word he had been looking for and it tasted bitter in his mouth. his always had just left him on the floor of their bedroom to go spend alone his last night in town, but that’s the thing about forever’s: they last. so he wiped his face on his sleeves, threw his shoes back on, and ran after the only decision he knew he’d never regret. it was weird being soulmates when they didn’t even believe in the existence of the soul, but somehow it was fitting: the exception to the rule, the nonsensical side of feeling there’s no need to bring logic into. he just wished he’d found his strength a bit earlier because now he was wandering about the dimly lit streets way past curfew.

after four a.m., the city fell into a silence similar to death; an omen. jinyoung remembered once reading a book about how some ancient fortune tellers saw the future in birds’ flights. he thought of why humans are so obsessed with flying when it usually means falling. he tried to imagine landing on his own two feet: he couldn’t. somewhere his eyes couldn’t reach, there was jaebeom’s hand at the small of his back making sure he wouldn’t unlearn moving. and there was his voice, clearer than summer nights. and it was screaming something—his name? then came light and a rush of cold air and—

there was just panting for a short while as they lay on the pavement, pale as the moon above. jaebeom was looking at him from below, his small hands clinging tight onto his arms. jinyoung was sort of sitting on top of him, sort of wondering if he had hurt his boyfriend by being an idiot, sort of hoping they hadn’t been caught by a military vehicle outside the confines of their apartment. when the world seemed to settle back into stillness, jaebeom’s fingers started stroking jinyoung’s arms up and down, up and down, slowly and insistently, as if making sure he was actually there, whole.

“i am sorry,” – sobbed jinyoung as faintly as he could – “i am so fucking sorry.”

and for a while, that was all he could say. he kept repeating _sorry_ as if it would erase all the evil and the ugly like when he was a child. like when it was easier and he could be jinyoung and not a doctor, nor a person: just jinyoung. jaebeom hushed and lulled him in his arms, unable to stop his own tears from tinging their hearts blue.

“it’s okay, baby… it’s gonna be over soon, very soon,” he mumbled and jinyoung didn’t know which of the things he could be referring to terrified him most.

they picked up their limbs and dried what was left of their tears. they spent sunrise eluding patrol cars, managing by sheer luck to go unnoticed. jaebeom helped him sneak back into their house from the emergency stairs. jinyoung never let go of his hands; even once he was alone, he couldn’t remember doing it. jaebeom hadn’t said anything ( _so you won’t go nuts trying to remember,_ he’d joked) because he’d kept drilling sweet nothings into jinyoung’s head to distract him, instead. he would have remembered him by the tang of his sweat after he came back from the iron factory, by the cupid’s bow on his top lip. by the mellowness of his singing voice, and by the way his hands looked even softer when he didn’t wear his rings.

after all, what was he supposed to do with memories besides remembering? write them down? between the two of them, he had never been the one interested in words: they came too easily to him. jaebeom was the one who had disciplined himself to read every day, to write down any detail that stuck out, to understand and eventually give a name to each of his discoveries. jinyoung loved that, too, about him. even when it meant listening to his boyfriend’s spiels about foreign authors that were now banned from schools.

for instance, he had always hated shakespeare, unlike jaebeom, who was obsessed with his works. and yet, as he sat on the floor of their bedroom, emptied, only the pleasant rhythm of: _“parting is such sweet sorrow, / that i shall say good night till it be morrow”_ rang in his ears the way deafening silence does. there couldn’t be a talent more useless, he thought, than that of being able to piece together some verses and disgrace. but he wasn’t left to his misery much longer.

suddenly, the doorbell rang. insistently, the way either jackson or mark would ring it, but it was too early for them to be anywhere near his apartment. besides, how could they have just bypassed the guard at the entrance without trouble? curiosity was enough to shake jinyoung out of his reverie – that, and something more visceral and inexplicable, akin to hope. he rushed to the front door and threw it open, no time to dither further. and there, clear as a summer night, both his friends stood, looking bewildered. he couldn’t get a single word out before he was pulled by the arm outside the flat, the building, into the street and towards the main square.

“what are you doing?” – he managed to say despite the confusion and his sore throat – “we can’t go there together, they’re gonna arrest—”

 _everyone_ was out there. they mingled with the crowd, still panting, and directed their gaze to the small podium built right on the line where the stone paving of the square gave way to the grass at the bottom of the hills. four people were milling about on top of it, all wearing military uniforms he couldn’t recognise. jackson and mark held either of his hands each, the latter turning to look at him with furrowed brows. just as he opened his mouth to speak, the soldiers on the wooden platform greeted the citizens in stilted korean. they introduced themselves and, as thoughtfully as they could, started explaining what was going on.

they were talking, but jinyoung wasn’t sure many were listening. their words fell on the crowd like raindrops, hitting each at a different time, until the first domino piece leaned on the next and began the uproar. how could anyone blame them, though? one day, someone loyal to a different flag waltzes into your country and tells you the war you’ve lost everything to doesn’t exist. they tell you there’s nothing to be scared of anymore, though, because they’ve come to free your country. they’ve come to save you.

jinyoung’s last grain of sanity, the one that was momentarily ignoring the absurdity of it all, thought they’d done a very poor job at making themselves sound reliable. nevertheless, both those who believed them and those who didn’t, seethed with unconceivable rage. the rainy weather filtered the scenery in a grey light, making the scene look like a fever dream. some shouted, indignant, some cried, helpless – mark’s hold on his hand tightened, jackson’s slackened. jinyoung, caught in the middle, was just glad to have a way to keep himself upright, or he was sure he’d have collapsed.

as the swarm of people grew tenser by the minute, the soldiers tried to explain that the conflict had been a strategic set-up, that tyrants had worked their way into the major government offices, that they weren’t sure about it, but most of the soldiers had probably been executed right outside the border. they tried, but the combined efforts of all those broken hearts burst out in a clamour so loud jinyoung couldn’t even hear his thoughts anymore. and maybe it was better like that, now, he could keep himself together for a minute more without choking. all he could see was jaebeom’s face, smiling, his eyes the shape of crescents. he wished with all his might that time would shatter and rewind, just so that he could be the one to leave instead of him.

a few minutes passed and everyone was moving in every direction, jinyoung’s legs guiding him somewhere—the sea. maybe the boat hadn’t left yet. maybe he could swim to it and bring jaebeom back. he ran and ran, outside the walls, far away from the wailing and the screaming and the grieving. into the untamed nature until there was sand yielding under his feet and the gentle whispering of the waves echoed in his ears. he’d lost track of his friends, but when he turned around, he found they’d followed him. they kept their distance, cast a glance at the horizon. jinyoung dared look, too.

a terse sky above a desert beach. some shells sprinkled around like chocolate chips. sea foam like milk in his cappuccinos. in the distance, he thought he recognised the faint silhouette of a lonely boat sailing further and further away. a ghost from the future.

he sank to his knees as his eyes, fixed on the fading dot, wore out on the blue.

quietly, he cried.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed it! i worked really hard on this and i'm quite proud of how it turned out, even though i wish my sched hadn't been as tight so i could have tweaked it some more ;;;  
> come chat with me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/sinjaebeom/) if you'd like! ♡


End file.
